In the area of health care, there is a growing need for efficiently storing individuals' medical files for accessing by health-care-related personnel and insurance companies. For example, in an emergency situation in which communication with a patient is either impaired or impossible, it is desired that the patient have a medical information card carried on himself/herself which can be read by emergency medical personnel. U.S. Pat. No. 4,632,428 to Brown discloses a data card providing a microfilmed medical history, eye-readable emergency-oriented personal and medical data, and access to a central medical records bank.
Cards which include both visual medical information and visual identity information are also in existence. U.S. Pat. No. 5,161,826 to Van Giesen et al. discloses a card having the name of a person, an indication of a type of surgery performed on the person, and a surgeon's name on one side of the card. On a reverse side are photographs of the person's head and an X-ray of the surgery on the person. This card allows the person to present proof of a presence of metal within the person's body if an alarm signal is actuated by an X-ray scanning machine, such as one used in airports.
Also, it is envisioned that a number of medical centers will become centers of excellence for their specialties. Each of these medical centers would serve a large geographic area, and perhaps, the entire world population by electronically receiving a patient's medical information from a remote location, performing a diagnosis based on the information, and recommending a treatment based on the diagnosis.